Full Text of the Excerpt

If I hadn't had lung cancer, I would be working full-time still. I loved it. I love that group. I had the longest honeymoon I ever had in my life with that board and I realized after I'd been there a couple years that housers have their heads and their hearts in the same place. Civil libertarians are only heads. They don't have a heart.

SARAH THUESEN:

What do you mean by that exactly?

SUZANNE POST:

I mean it's all an intellectual exercise. I had a terrible, terrible experience while I was working for the ACLU twenty years ago. Not one person on the board came to the hospital. Nobody sent flowers. Nobody brought food over afterwards. I mean, it's just all in their head. They're great people, but—. I didn't realize any of that until I started working for people who had a great deal of heart.

SARAH THUESEN:

Had it both.

SUZANNE POST:

And had heart, just had heart, had empathy, compassion, had no trouble saying, "I love you." It just makes a work environment so different. So I probably would have stayed in that. I told them, I said, "I'd stay in this job until you all send somebody to me or until you get together and say, ‘What are we going to do about Suzy?"’ [Laughter] Because I really loved it, but it just wasn't possible.